Secrets in the Fire

by Henning Mankell

  HENNING MANKELL is one of Sweden’s best-selling authors. He has published a number of plays and novels for adults, many of them drawing on his experience in Africa. For children and young adults he writes poetic, intimate stories with strong narrative appeal, and these have won him several awards, including the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Prize.

  Sofia, the heroine of Secrets in the Fire, is a real person, a friend of Henning Mankell’s. Her moving story has been adapted for film.

  ANNE CONNIE STUKSRUD was born in Norway but has lived and studied in Australia since 1996. She has published two short story collections for young adults in Scandinavia, and is currently working on her third book.

  SECRETS IN

  THE FIRE

  Henning Mankell

  Translated by

  Anne Connie Stuksrud

  This edition published in 2000

  Copyright © Henning Mankell 1995

  First published by Rabén & Sjögren Bokförlag, Sweden, 1995 as Eldens Hemlighet

  Copyright English translation © Anne Connie Stuksrud 2000

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  9 Atchison Street

  St Leonards NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: frontdesk@allen-unwin.com.au

  Web: http://www.allenandunwin.com

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Mankell, Henning.

  Secrets in the Fire.

  ISBN 1865081817

  eISBN 9781743437186.

  1. Land mine victims – Mozambique – Fiction. I. Stuksrud, Anne Connie. II. Title.

  839.7

  Text edited by Margrete Lamond

  Cover photographs © Frank Carter. Lonely Planet Images and

  © Eric Wheater. Lonely Planet Images

  Cover design by David Altheim

  Text design by Sandra Nobes

  Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Maryborough, Victoria

  In memory of Maria Alface . . .

  an African girl

  who died when she was very young.

  This book is about her sister

  Sofia,

  who survived.

  CONTENTS

  A FEW WORDS BEFORE YOU READ THIS BOOK ...

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A few words before you read this book ...

  THERE ARE MANY expressive and beautiful words in the Swedish language.

  One of these words is okuvlig: indomitable.

  When you say it out loud you can get a sense of what it means . . .

  That you won’t let yourself be trampled on.

  That you won’t give in.

  This book is about an indomitable person called Sofia. She exists in real life and she’s 12 years old. She lives in one of the poorest countries in the world: Mozambique, on the east coast of Africa.

  Mozambique is actually a rich country. But it became poor as the result of a war which raged there for almost twenty years. Prior to 1974, Mozambique was a Portuguese colony. When the country became independent and went its own way, there were many who tried to prevent it – in particular the wealthy Portuguese who had lost their previous power. Many of them moved to South Africa. Racists in South Africa didn’t like what was going on in neighbouring Mozambique, either. They gave money and weapons to poverty-stricken and discontented Mozambicans, and encouraged them to initiate civil war. And, as happens in all wars, it was the civilians who suffered the most. Many people died and many fled. Sofia was one of these. But she survived.

  This book is about Sofia and the things that happened to her. Things that changed her whole life.

  HENNING MANKELL

  This is my story

  as I want it to be kept alive

  in your memory.

  The African heart

  is like the sun –

  big, red,

  a blood-coloured piece of silk.

  The African dusk dances.

  Out of the rising sun

  grow the first sounds,

  first whispering, murmuring

  and then, at last, much stronger.

  But it is still night.

  And Sofia is dreaming . . .

  CHAPTER ONE

  SOFIA IS RUNNING through the night.

  It’s dark and she’s terrified.

  She doesn’t know why she’s running, why she’s scared, or where she’s going.

  But there’s something behind her, something deep in the darkness that frightens her. She knows she has to go faster, she has to run faster. Whatever the invisible thing behind her is, it’s getting closer and closer.

  She’s frightened and alone and all she can do is run.

  She’s running along a path that twists between low trees and thornbushes. She can’t see the path, but she knows it by heart. Her feet know where the path turns and where it is straight. It’s the path she walks along every morning with her sister, Maria, that leads out to the field where they grow maize and greens and onions. Every morning at dawn she walks along it, and every night, just before dusk, she and Maria return with their Mama Lydia to the hut where they all live.

  But why is she running there now, in the darkness of the night?

  What is it that hunts her in the darkness – a beast with no eyes? She can feel its breath on her neck, and she tries to run even faster.

  But she doesn’t have the strength. Her first thought is to hide. To get off the path, to curl up and shrink into the bushes. She leaps the way she’s seen the antelopes leap, and leaves the ground.

  Then she realises.

  That’s exactly what the beast in the darkness wants her to do – leave the path: the most dangerous thing of all.

  Every morning Mama Lydia would say:

  ‘Never leave the path. Not even by a metre. Never take short cuts. Promise me that.’

  She knows there’s something dangerous in the ground. Armed soldiers that no one can see. Buried in the ground, invisible. Waiting and waiting for a foot to step on them. She tries desperately to keep hovering in the air. She knows she mustn’t put her feet back on the ground. But she hasn’t got the strength to keep hovering – she hasn’t got wings like a bird – and she’s being pulled towards the ground and the soles of her feet are already touching the dry earth.

  Then she wakes up.

  She’s wet with sweat, her heart hammers in her chest and at first she doesn’t know where she is. But then she hears the breathing of her sleeping brothers and mother. They’re lying close to each other on the floor of the hut. She reaches out carefully and touches her mother’s back. Her mother stirs, but doesn’t wake.

  Sofia lies with open eyes in the silence and the dark. Mama Lydia’s breathing is light and irregular, as if she were already awake and preparing the porridge for their mor
ning meal. On her left side are Alfredo and Faustino – Faustino who’s so little that he hasn’t even learnt to walk.

  Before too long there will be another person sleeping on the floor of the hut. Mama Lydia is due to have a baby soon. Sofia has often seen her fat before. She knows there can’t be many days to go.

  She thinks about her dream. Now that she’s woken up, she’s both relieved and happy, but she’s also sad.

  She thinks about her dream – and about what happened that morning one year ago.

  She thinks about Maria, whose breathing she can no longer hear in the darkness.

  Maria, who is gone.

  Sofia lies awake in the darkness for a long time. An owl hoots somewhere outside, and a wary rat rustles outside the straw wall of the hut.

  She thinks about what happened that morning, when everything was as it used to be, and she and Maria were on their way to help Lydia weed the fields on the outskirts of the village.

  And she thinks about all the things that happened before then.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IT WAS OLD MUAZENA who told Sofia and Maria about the secrets in the fire.

  Every flame has a secret. If you sit at the right distance from the fire, you can look so deeply into the dancing flames that you can foresee what is going to happen in the future, in the days that lie stretched out and unused ahead of you. Muazena had pointed her wrinkled, shaking old hand towards a field where the plants stood in rows.

  ‘That’s how life looks,’ said Muazena. ‘Every day is a plant that you should nurse and water, keep clear of weeds and one day harvest. Every plant represents a day in your life that you haven’t yet lived.’

  All memories are found in the fire too.

  Old Muazena had told Sofia and Maria about that as well, when they were still quite young. By looking into the fire you could unlock memories that you might have thought you had forgotten for ever.

  Sofia often thought of Muazena. But Muazena wasn’t around now, any more than Maria was. When Sofia thought about Muazena she went back to the time before they had been forced to flee. That was before the long journey, before they settled to live here by the river. Those had been good times, when she barely knew what pain was. Or sadness. Or hunger. Or the worst of them all: loneliness.

  They had lived in that village all their lives. What Sofia remembered most clearly was the village of round huts with their neatly flattened roofs of palm leaves. That was were she had been born, and where Maria and Alfredo had been born. When she was a baby, her father, Hapakatanda, had lifted her towards the sky to let her greet the sun. She’d been tied to her mother’s back – her mother Lydia, who at the time had been the prettiest and strongest woman in the whole village. Sofia used to be on Lydia’s back as she bent forward to hoe the dry soil. She always heard music when she thought of that time: drums and the monotonous melody of the timbila. Sofia still kept an echo inside her of the rocking movement her mother made when she danced with the other women. Sofia couldn’t remember that she’d ever been hungry then. Or scared. It had been a happy time.

  Muazena had said something about that too.

  She’d been talking about paradise. She’d said that Happiness is what we realise we have had, after we’ve lost it.

  Then it had happened – and Sofia had been trying to forget it ever since. But the memory was like a scar on her skin that would never go away.

  It was night.

  No moon, no stars.

  Then suddenly her whole life exploded. A sharp white light filled the hut and then there was a series of powerful cracks. It was the one memory in her life that she most wanted to forget. She had seen twisted faces in the sharp light. They were humans, but they looked like monsters, and she knew straight away that they had come to kill her and everyone else in the village.

  They were bandits.

  They had sneaked towards the village under cover of darkness and burnt the huts and killed the people. In the chaos of fire and death that followed – the bleeding bodies, the screaming and shouting – her father Hapakatanda had tried to shield her and Maria. But he was struck by the blade of a large knife, or maybe it had been an axe, and he’d fallen across them so that she and Maria lay hidden underneath him.

  Afterwards, everything was silent. That was when Sofia knew what was meant by the Silence of Death. But her father had managed to do in death what he’d been trying to do before he died: protect her and Maria from the knives and axes and guns.

  In the morning, when the sun returned, they dared to crawl out. Their father was dead and they were crying. Muazena was dead too. She lay face down in the dying fire. But Lydia wasn’t anywhere to be found, and nor was Alfredo. Neither Sofia nor Maria dared to call out, and they wept soundlessly as they crept from the hut. They went through the village. Dead people lay all over the place – everyone they knew and were related to, people they had played with, worked with, laughed with. The monsters who had come during the night had brought with them the Silence of Death. They had turned the village into a cemetery. People lay everywhere in twisted positions. The bandits had even killed the dogs. Some people had their arms and legs cut off, some even had their heads cut off. The girls walked through the dead village, through the Silence of Death, until they reached the last of the burnt huts. Sofia was sure that Lydia and Alfredo would be somewhere. Not everyone could be dead. She and Maria couldn’t be the only ones left. Muazena once told them that the biggest disaster that could happen to anyone was to be the very last person left on Earth.

  ‘I don’t want to be the last person,’ Sofia thought, weeping. ‘If something happens to Maria, I’ll be left here alone.’

  Lydia was alive. So was Alfredo. Sofia and Maria found them on the outskirts of the village, hidden in the bushes. There were Lydia, Alfredo and two other women and three children. Sofia and Maria didn’t exclaim with relief because the bandits might still be around to hear them. They all just held each other close and lay hidden all day in the bush, without water and without food, waiting for it to get dark.

  Then they fled. At first they walked through the prickly scrub under cover of night. After a while they dared to travel during the day as well. Since they didn’t know which way to go, they simply went straight ahead, straight across the dry countryside towards the high mountains that showed on the horizon. Sofia could remember how hungry she had been. But it was thirst that really plagued her.

  On the third day, Lydia argued with the other women about which direction they should take. Lydia, Sofia, Maria and Alfredo continued towards the mountains while the others went a different way.

  They kept walking and never looked back.

  Somewhere on that road towards the unknown an old woman appeared suddenly in front of them. She was very poor, her clothes hung in tatters and her legs were swollen and covered in sores. Sofia thought she must have been as old as Muazena. When Mama Lydia spoke to her they understood each other, since their languages were similar. Lydia told her what had happened.

  ‘It was bandits,’ she said. ‘They came during the night and they killed my husband.’

  ‘Anyone else?’ the old woman asked. ‘The bandits are monsters and they never kill just the one. They kill as many as they can.’

  ‘They killed everyone in the village,’ Lydia answered.

  ‘And the dogs,’ said Sofia. ‘They killed all the dogs, too.’

  The old woman started to rock her body, tossing her head from side to side and wailing. Lydia did the same, and then Sofia, Maria and Alfredo joined in. They rocked their bodies back and forth, and now at last they dared to shriek aloud their sorrow and pain for all to hear.

  Then they continued towards the mountains. The old woman followed them and shared some meat from a dead bird. They found water to drink in an almost-dry river bed.

  By night they slept next to fires underneath mighty baobab trees. Sofia would wake Maria when she heard lions growling in the darkness.

  The old woman never told them her name. But she
had a friendly smile – despite having lost all her teeth.

  The monsters returned in Sofia’s dream. When one of them lifted the axe over her father, she woke up. Lydia was sleeping with Alfredo huddled close to her body. The old woman slept next to the dying coals of the fire, with Maria beside her. Sofia wondered whether it could be the spirit of Muazena who walked again in the old woman who never gave her name.

  They continued their journey towards the mountains in the early dawn. The mountains still seemed to be just as far away. Sofia heard Mama Lydia ask the nameless old woman about the city.

  ‘I’ve never been there,’ said the old woman.

  ‘Is it far away?’ Lydia asked.

  ‘The city is far away, so that people like you and me and your children can’t get there. My legs are old and aching, your children’s legs are too short and young. None of us have legs made to walk to the city.’

  Lydia didn’t ask any more. They continued in silence. The heat was intense. They tried to shade themselves from the sun by wrapping parts of their capulanas* around their heads. The old woman still had some water left in a dirty plastic cup. But by late afternoon they still hadn’t seen any clumps of trees – a sign of water close by.

  Just as the brief hour of dusk arrived, the old woman suddenly stopped and, with great difficulty, sat down on the dry ground.

  ‘I’ve come this far,’ she said after a moment of silence. ‘And now I’ve finished walking.’

  Lydia told Sofia and Maria to collect wood for a fire.

  ‘But there aren’t any trees,’ said Sofia. ‘Where are we going to sleep?’

  ‘Do as I tell you,’ Lydia replied, and her voice sounded tired. ‘We’re staying here tonight.’

  Sofia wanted to ask more. Who was going to protect them against the wild animals? What would happen if the fire burnt out and there was no tree-spirit to guard them? But she didn’t dare to ask any more. She’d heard in Mama Lydia’s voice that she didn’t have any answers right now. Along with Maria and Alfredo, she collected dry grass and sticks. Sofia kept herself close to Alfredo the whole time. There could have been snakes, and he was still too small to understand when to be afraid.